Time and Dirt
(First Day -- Previous Day -- Day 23 -- Next Day)
Day 23
Heliopause Colony on Planet Vertumna, Medbay
“Solane... ugh...
Solane, how late is it? Oh right... You can’t tell me right now. Let me look outside.
...
Wait, afternoon? Oh dear plants and xenos, that can’t be... I had so much work still waiting for me from the past days, and now I missed half a day’s work *again*. I’m totally failing all our plant children...
At least this time of the year they won’t be thirsty much, but some actually risk drowning instead, or being suffocated by the gooey weeds, or strangulated by the wild vines that I have noticed recently growing here more and more, and then there are the xenos that want to eat them or trample them and ugh, how am I ever going to do all of this *alone*, Solane...
The council won’t let this opportunity to put me down go, I’m sure. I can’t take that much longer. I just want to be in our garden in peace like I used to do. Like we used to do. Why can’t that be possible anymore? And now my mother will probably tell me again that I can’t spend so much time with you and have to focus on my work if I’m serious about it, and I don’t know how she can keep saying those things, with a smile on her face, too. Does she not remember you? Did she never get to know you?
Why is it that I still feel like everyone is abandoning us, or trying to tear us apart again? I thought I was past that... I’m really trying to not despair, at least out of fairness to you, Solane.
But what can I even do at this point? Except for keeping up trying to work... work in the fields and our garden, work out what’s going on with the world, and also how to support you... Maybe I could bring you new flowers, some probably have healing abilities we don’t know about yet. At least more than whatever that blue liquid Dr. Instance injected you with. It still gives me shivers to think about it... was I wrong to trust her? But can I even afford to not trust her...We don’t have any other doctors here, after all. You were going to be the closest thing to another one, weren’t you? Ah, you had so many ambitions...
Looking at you now laying so still in the medbed... Hey, Solane! When you wake up...
Wait, your eyes briefly opened again? Tiki, did you see that? Oh wait, Tiki’s not here, I need to tell it immediately. And-and of course, get back to my work. You don’t want to find this place a mess when you can come out again, right? No one wants to find their home a mess if they’ve been gone for a while...